Most political scientists and journalists got the rise of
Donald Trump all wrong. I confidently told friends that political parties don’t
commit suicide (how could I have forgotten the Whigs in the 1850s?); I get
reminded of that line a lot. But it’s worth reflecting on what went wrong and
to turn to one political scientist who saw the danger of Trump all along:
Norman Ornstein of American Enterprise Institute, recently interviewed
by Andrew Prokop of Vox.

Many of us fell into promoting the thesis of The Party Decides, the book that argues
that party “intense policy demanders” in office and out govern the nomination
process. It’s an excellent book and folks like me might have relied on the
thesis too much, without giving sufficient attention to the entirety of a
sophisticated work. For instance, the party will ordinarily decide if the
intense policy demanders can agree on a candidate, and if the party is not too
weak to stop an undesirable candidate. Neither of those things happened this
year. The party never coalesced around a candidate to stop Trump, and the
national Republican Party is in disarray.

There was group think involved, and I was part of it. You’d
think someone who experienced the Black Swan that was Scott Brown in 2010 would
have had more respect for improbable but not impossible events, but I didn’t.

Saying the party didn’t coalesce and was weak isn’t enough
though, and Ornstein was unusually well-positioned to explain the GOP’s debility.
Along with Thomas Mann of Brookings, he is co-author of It’s
Even Worse Than It Looks, the fascinating book on the extremism that has
come to dominate the Republican Party nationally. So he’s been carefully
studying the descent of the GOP.

The largest element in the collapse of the establishment and
rise of Trump, Ornstein contends, is: “[I}f you forced me to pick one factor
explaining what's happened, I would say this is a self-inflicted wound by
Republican leaders.”

The GOP leadership has delegitimized government, played to
the nativist element, and catered to the fringe elements of talk radio and
cable television. They’ve characterized Democrats not just as opponents but as
subversives and corrupt. They’ve attacked President Obama relentlessly but
failed to keep promises made to Tea Partiers, while slavishly attending to the
needs of their wealthy patrons. Trump has taken advantage of all of this –
exploiting nativist sentiment against immigrants, Latinos and Muslims, while
promising to restore working class prosperity. Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, Mitch
McConnell, take your pick – they all thought they could bait this tiger and
ride it, and they are all being consumed by it. Of the recruits to the Gingrich
Revolution of 1994, Ornstein says “The problem is that all the people he
recruited to come in really believed that shit. They all came in believing that
Washington was a cesspool. So what followed has been a very deliberate attempt
to blow up and delegitimize government . . . .”

That is no way to govern and government has failed. So why
not Trump instead of these idiots?

Ornstein says Trump has less policy knowledge about domestic
and international affairs than any candidate of the past fifty years, including
the comedian Pat Paulsen. But Trump could win the General Election. Ornstein
puts that at twenty percent odds – not a great chance, but not insignificant.

Whatever happens it won’t be easy to put the GOP back
together again. Ornstein sees three components to the party: a populist
anti-establishment and anti-leadership component represented by Trump. Then
there is the radical and irresponsible part represented by Ted Cruz and the
Freedom Caucus. Finally, establishment leadership like Ryan and McConnell,
deeply conservative but also ruthlessly pragmatic about getting and keeping
power.

I know I’ll be paying more attention to Ornstein this
election season.